For fans of big-screen monster films, KAIDA Yuji is a very well known name. Best known for his vivid illustrations of Godzilla and other popular Toho kaiju, some of Mr KAIDA's most beautiful work is presented here in this full-color flexicover volume. This book's 128 pages are packed with lush artwork, including a brand new piece showing Godzilla in London, created especially for this book.Whether you are an admirer of this Japanese master's work or just a fan of monster movie art, this book is an essential purchase!

For Kurt Jackson (b.1961), 'Painting the sea could become an obsession, an entire oeuvre in its own right, an endless life absorbing task.' And, as this book attests, Jackson's dedication to capturing its constant shape shifting - stillness to thundering force, shallows to mysterious depths - have brought forth paintings that communicate the sea's ebb and flow, its magic and elusiveness. Kurt Jackson's Sea captures the beauty of the artist's constantly evolving relationship with one of nature's most challenging subjects. Two hundred colour images complement Jackson's reflections on his interactions with inspirational coastal landscapes - largely experienced in his native Cornwall, but stretching way beyond the county too.

American Brad Washburn's impact on his proteges and imitators was as profound as that of any other adventurer in the twentieth century. Unquestionably regarded as the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history and as one of the finest mountain photographers of all time, Washburn transformed American attitudes toward wilderness and revolutionized the art of mountaineering and exploration in the great ranges. In The Last of His Kind, National Geographic Adventure contributing editor David Roberts goes beyond conventional biography to reveal the essence of this man through the prism of his extraordinary exploits from New England to Chamonix, and from the Himalayas to the Yukon. An exciting narrative of mountain climbing in the twentieth century, The Last of His Kind brings into focus Washburn's deeds in the context of the history of mountaineering, and provides a fascinating look at an amazing culture and the influential icon who shaped it.

Published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of G.F. Watts, this book provides a lively and engaging introduction to one of the most charismatic figures in the history of British art. Covering all aspects of Watts's career, it places him back at the centre of the visual culture of the 19th century. George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) was one of the great artists of the 19th century. As a young man Watts exhibited alongside Turner, and by the end of his long career he was influential upon Picasso. Sculptor, portraitist and creator of classic Symbolist imagery, Watts was seen also as more than an artist - a philanthropic visionary whose art charted the progress of humanity in the modern world. After four years in Italy in the 1840s, Watts was recognized as a Renaissance master reborn in the Victorian age. Nicknamed 'Signor', and working in isolation from the mainstream commercial art-world, he became a cult figure, obsessively returning to a series of subjects describing the fundamental themes of existence - love, life, death, hope. Engaging in turn with Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Aesthetic Movement and Symbolism, Watts remained true to his own personal vision of the evolution of humanity. As a portraitist, Watts set out to capture the essence of the great characters of 19th-century Britain, donating his finest portraits to the National Portrait Gallery in London. Watts's portraits of figures such as William Morris, John Stuart Mill and the poets Tennyson and Swinburne have become the classic images of these cultural celebrities, while more intimate portraits such as Choosing, showing the artist's first wife, the actress Ellen Terry, are among the most popular of all British portraits. During the 1880s Watts emerged from his cult status to be embraced by the public. Feted as the great modern master, even as "England's Michelangelo", he was given large retrospective exhibitions in London and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. His reputation grew also in Europe, where the Symbolists revered him as one of their great exemplars. Watts's most celebrated works, such as Love and Life, Hope, and the epic sculpture Physical Energy, were reproduced globally and their fame was unsurpassed within contemporary art in the years around 1900. By this time, Watts had acquired a country home in Surrey - Limnerslease - around which he and his second wife, the designer Mary Watts, built a type of utopian settlement, which has recently been restored and opened to the public as Watts Gallery - Artists' Village. By the end of his life Watts was a national figure, an inspirational artist who had found a meaningful role for art as a catalyst for social change and community integration.

In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century. Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O'Keeffe, reads Maggie Nelson and Sally Rooney, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time. We're often told that art can't change anything. Laing argues that it can. Art changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities and it offers fertile new ways of living.

Rocking the Wall explores the epic Bruce Springsteen concert in East Berlin on July 19, 1988, and how it changed the world. Erik Kirschbaum spoke to scores of fans and concert organizers on both sides of the Berlin Wall, including Jon Landau, Springsteen's long-time friend and manager, to unearth this fascinating story. With lively behind-the-scenes details from eyewitness accounts, magazine and newspaper clippings, TV recordings, and even Stasi files, as well as photos and memorabilia, this gripping book transports you back in the middle of those heady times shortly before the Berlin Wall fell and gives you a front-row spot at one of the biggest and most exciting rock concerts ever, anywhere. It takes you to an unforgettable journey with Springsteen through the divided city, to his hotel, and his dressing room at the open air concert grounds in Weissensee, where The Boss, live on stage, delivered a courageous speech against the Wall to a record-breaking crowd of more than 300,000 delirious young East Germans full of joy and hope. Their thunderous reaction to his speech was so intense that it even briefly brought tears to Springsteen's eyes. And their tremendous, powerful cry for freedom became the "final nail in the coffin" of the Communist regime and subsequently helped fuel the uprising that brought down the Wall.

Erik Kirschbaum, a native of New York City and long-time Springsteen fan, has lived in Germany for more than twenty-five years and in Berlin since 1993. He is a correspondent for the Reuters international news agency and has written about entertainment, politics, sports, economics, as well as disasters and climate change in nearly thirty countries. He is a devoted father of four, an enthusiastic cyclist, a solar power entrepreneur and an unabashed crusader for renewable energy. Rocking the Wall is his third book.

Praise for Rocking The Wall

Inside this book is as clear a statement of the power of this music as anyone, ever, has come up with." -Dave Marsh

"An illuminating and impressively detailed examination of a frequently overlooked moment in the nexus of rock music and political liberation. I learned a great deal and enjoyed doing so." -Eric Alterman